Human Encounters with Dolphins in the Bahamas

Like to Swim with me?

Human Encounters in the Bahamas by James the Dolphin on Porpoise

As a socially well adjusted Dolphin, I find diving with humans is a popular tourist attraction when in Bahamas. We need to swim a fair distance to get there so it needs to be worthwhile or the kids get bored and bunt chubby people for amusement.

Although human encounter is also popular in other places, Bahamas is considered as the center of this exhilarating experience.

The Bahamas also offers different opportunities to dive and swim alongside with not just humans, but with other more edible marine animals as well.

Dolphin Encounters in the Bahamas - Come and enjoy with us

This video will show you how much fun it is to swim with you guys. Book your trip now and ask your guides where we are. We will be there waiting for you. We promise you so much fun. Maybe if you are good enough, we may just have a show for you.

Bimini Island, Great Bahama Bank

First dolphin stop

First stop for a dolphin/human encounter is the Bimini Island, which is situated on the Great Bahama Bank. With Bimini Undersea, you will experience swimming with wild dolphins and us with fairly passive humans. We put on our best crazy grins to look wild. But most of the time, it's Bill and Marion in the mornings with Trevor and Jane taking over after lunch.

Last year, Danny was able to get his head into an old shark skeleton jaw and did we have some fun! However, human encounter is not a guarantee since these creatures get grumpy if the water is a tad chill or they panic if we put a shark fin on our backs and swoop past them. A guy named Gary Larsen caught their looks of total seizure perfectly in his cartoons years ago. Thank heavens for waterproof Kindles!

And sometimes we get a bit tired or they give us bad fish bits, so we stay in hiding. Still, Bimini Undersea ranks high in Wild Dolphin/Human Excursion's at 80 percent as ranked by both sides. A neat thing here is that the bigger the stomach hang down of the one piece cover humans, the smaller the one piece. George thought he heard the word Quebec mumbled but who knows.

Other encounters with wild dolphins

Swimming with Dolphins

For timid homo sapiens (the sapiens is a bit of a joke with us!), encountering our wild dolphin imitations can also be experienced even by non experts in snorkeling. One can experience the thrill by just merely floating on the surface of the sea with a life jacket and goggles on. Dolphins are very playful and interact with people with enthusiasm so wear a bathing suit as well so we don't make any mistakes on what is on the lunch menu.

In Bahamas, the Bottom Time II live-aboard dive boat will let humans experience the joy of snorkeling and at the same time, swimming with dolphins at White Sand Bridge, off the Grand Bahama Island on the Little Bahama Bank. Make sure the mate phones ahead so a few of us can get there on time. Our bathroom habits tend to be spontaneous so be prepared. Give some decent food assurances and we'll send out a pod of the teenagers to make the words "Wild Dolphin" look like the understatement of the decade. We're talkin' face hardware and tattoos that are mind benders!

Here's one of our young ones

Dolphin-Human Encounters

Sea Fevers

Dolphin-human encounters usually took place in the morning, where humans show up before they get into the sauce. Sea Fevers, one of the oldest live-board dive boats in the Bahamas, can also be seen regularly in the area and for us, the gnarly bottom is a great promise of a decent play. They have been successful in promoting encounters basically by phoning Arnie, our manager. These two dive boats are the best at bringing house broken humans with some sense of decency at times when we are ready to boogy. Also, the itinerary of Nekton Pilot's Bahama Adventure includes a stop over in this area for a swim with us. Party's in the past. Older members of our pod are sent over for a relaxing but playful reminders of serious parties in the past.

The human dolphin connection - Close?

Really? Love to explore this more intelligently.

Snorkeling with dolphins

Around the waters of Orange Cay

The BlackBeard's Cruises offer snorkeling with dolphins around the waters of Orange Cay. The Small Hope Bay Lodge offers a human dolphin experience in open water and in the freshwater river that splits the Andros Island in to two. Abacos dive operators also offers tourists a good chance of dolphin encounters. In fact, the Brendals Dive Center offers specialty trips to experience dolphin encounter. We're working hard to put on more shows in other places as more and more dolphins hear of these R and R meet-ups with humans and come here for their winter vacation. So, check the water. Sometimes, it's hard to attract your attention to new playgrounds.

Here is your snorkeling invitation - Come and snorkel with us in the Bahamas

Let's see how many of you have swam with us - Let us know

Opportunities are out there to swim with dolphins. I had a rare opportuity in Maldives and it just happened. I was wondering what big creature was swimming with me. When I went back people were saying there were dolphins. Only then did I realize I was swimming with one.

Have you swam with us, dolphins?

The Dolphin-Human Encounter

Truly unique and priceless

The Dolphin/Human encounter is a truly unique and priceless experience. They pay, we play. Doing IQ tests on animals like this is a real waste of time so we dolphins just relax and smile. The gathering will give you both sides a sense of shared knowledge with their opposite number. You will truly appreciate how dolphins behave in their natural habitat and how humans behave when massively hung over or in total panic.

Swimming along with humans with just the occasional bunt for effect, will teach us that in this life, we have to live alongside with other animals. They are an important part of our existence and should be cared for accordingly. Soon we may have to leave if the doofuses foul up the Oceans anymore and we may need to take all this information with us so "So long, and thanks for all the fish!"

Have you swam with us, dolphins? - The dolphin community wants some feedback

Did you enjoy swimming with us, dolphins?

The Dolphin Experience at Lucaya

The Underwater Explorer Society

The Dolphin Experience at Lucaya on the Grand Bahama offers four programs which include open water dolphin dive in conjunction with UNEXSO, the Underwater Explorer Society. I love these guys. They go gaga at finding leftovers we ate a 100 years ago. Here, you are sure to meet one of us since the diver and snorkelers are in a controlled environment for a meet and greet session.

The UNEXSO's Dolphin Dive program allows two dolphins to join ten scuba divers at maximum for an open ocean release. This exhilarating experience will give each divers close encounter with dolphins since the dolphins swim around them. Frankly, speaking as a dolphin, I am not too keen on this one but hey, we got tarty dolphins that will do ANYTHING for a few fish and we have names for them too!

The Dolphin Close Encounter Program

The Dolphin Swim Program

The Dolphin Close Encounter program offers anyone a chance to interact with dolphins from the submerged platform even for non-swimmers if they can stand the morality of these sell-outs. The Dolphin Swim program on the other hand gives snorkelers opportunities to swim along with the dolphins in the protected areas of water of Sanctuary Bay and these scungies have even agreed not to do their shark imitations although watching humans do the water walk is about as good as sport gets.

The Dolphin Assistant Trainer Program

Reserve and book in advance

The fourth program, which is the in-depth Dolphin Assistant Trainer program, educates individuals on the importance of humans and the proper care they deserve out of their element. We have also seen the human leaders trying to explain us to the humans. Hahahahaha. For their part, the program is limited to four participants only, who must be 16 years old and above. As we are massively more intelligent, we accept 3 year olds and need about 10 minutes to cover the entire repertoire of human behavior and thinking. The Dolphin Experience programs, including the UNEXSO Dolphin Dive, require a reservation, and have to be booked in advance since they are extremely popular to both human and dolphin tourists.

The UNEXSO

Life span of dolphins

Make a guess

How long do you think we dolphins live? Well, the average lifespan of dolphins like the bottlenose is about 25 years but some of them could live up to 50. This is the oldest known living dolphin.

Please leave your comments

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Peg Cole 2 years agofrom Dallas, Texas

The Dolphin Encounter was one of our most memorable times we spent on our vacation in Florida. We have talked about how much fun and how educational this experience was for a number of years. Our photos remind us of this wonderful event and so did your article here. Thank you.

Author

Mary Norton 4 years agofrom Ontario, Canada

@JoleneBelmain: Thank you so much for the blessing. I truly appreciate it.

JoleneBelmain 4 years ago

That would be such an amazing experience so swim with dolphins... I would love it! Great pictures, and wonderful and uplifting lens :)

~BLESSED~

FashionMommy 5 years ago

I enjoyed reading this lens. I think dolphins are amazing.

Author

Mary Norton 5 years agofrom Ontario, Canada

@CastleRoyLisa: We always talked about our dolphin swim, too. If they only realize how much fun we had, they might just try to charge us much.

Author

Mary Norton 5 years agofrom Ontario, Canada

@HeartBroken62: Thank you so much. Hope you will have a chance next time to swim with these dolphins.

Author

Mary Norton 5 years agofrom Ontario, Canada

@MrWidemouth: I am sure your kids enjoyed it.

Author

Mary Norton 5 years agofrom Ontario, Canada

@WriterJanis2: My swim with them was totally unplanned. It happened so fast I did not realize they were close to me.

Author

Mary Norton 5 years agofrom Ontario, Canada

@CruiseReady: I am happy you had fun visiting this dolphin lens.

poutine 5 years ago

very cool lens.

Laraine Sims 5 years agofrom Lake Country, B.C.

Well now we know what the dolphin think of us homo sapiens! Very cute .. I loved all of it. The Videos were wonderful to watch too! Angel Blessed.

CruiseReady 5 years agofrom East Central Florida

What an ultra cool lens! So very clever to write it as a dolphin. I really enjoyed it.

WriterJanis2 5 years ago

My daughter loves dolphins. She has had a dolphin encounter, but hopes to one day swim freely with them. Love the lens!

Interdev 5 years ago

very porposfull

MrWidemouth 5 years ago

I love the way you wrote from the Dolphin's perspective. We have visited the Grand Bahama Island twice - once when we got married and once with all our kids who did get to swim with the dolphins!

HeartBroken62 5 years ago

Would love to do this...always have wanted to go swim with the dolphins. Last year for my birthday we went to Gulf Shores on a mini vacation package. We had the opportunity to go on the Dolphin Cruz or Deep Sea Fishing...I let my husband go on the fishing and he had a blast...next time (if there is one), I am going on the Dolphin Cruz! Great lens...love the from a Dolphin point of view narrative...really good job.

Lisa 5 years agofrom Rhode Island

we took a cruise and went to the Bahamas we did the dolphin encounter it was so much fun it the part of the trip my husband couldn't stop talking about.

Author

Mary Norton 5 years agofrom Ontario, Canada

@WhiteOak50: Hope you get a chance one day.

WhiteOak50 5 years ago

I have always had this very unique connection with dolphins. I have never swam with them and have only seen them from a distance. To swim with them is a dream I have had for a long time. Great job on this page!

Author

Mary Norton 5 years agofrom Ontario, Canada

@anonymous: I know of an 80 year old diver who go down with one of the dive masters holding her hand all the time. I admire her.

anonymous 5 years ago

I have been to the Bahamas twice but was afraid then to swim with the dolphins, you see I am afraid of the deep water. I really would like to do it though, just to touch them and feel their beautiful energy :)

squid-janices7 6 years ago

Great lens with lots of information and excellent videos. Haven't taken a swim with any dolphins myself, but it would be fun.

ideadesigns 6 years ago

That UNEXSO video where they do tricks in the wild is AWESOME! They are so free and yet they want to do tricks for fish. Excellent lens enjoyed my visit!

Linda Hahn 6 years agofrom California

Thank you for sticking up for the little guys. Loved your elephant lens too.

nort43 6 years ago

Speaking as a Dolphin...I think this over rates the humans.

anonymous 6 years ago

You know, I would really love to go swimming with dolphins, that would be so much fun to do. This is a nice lens you have created.

anonymous 6 years ago

Love dolphins and adore them. They are intelligent creatures and should be treated as such.

ChrisDay LM 6 years ago

Such amazing and spiritual creatures - can't cope with captured dolphins, though. Just to think these incredibly lovely and sentient beings are so often and fatally part of the 'collateral catch' of factory fishing methods around the world.

MargoPArrowsmith 6 years ago

Lovely.

Lorelei Cohen 6 years agofrom Canada

Dolphins are such a lovely and intelligent creature. I wish we as humans could give their home a little more respect. Best wishes in the New Year.